IT SEEMS hard to believe now but until this time last year, declaring yourself a “climate change sceptic” was a bit like admitting to being a banker or the kind of person who puts cats in dustbins for fun.

As a long-time “denier” I remember it well: the heated rows; the sneery put-downs; the whispers that I’d joined the ranks of creation- ists, 9/11 “truthers” and David Icke-style conspiracy theorists who believe the world is secretly controlled by a lizard-headed master race.

But then, a year ago today, all that changed. Suddenly it became clear that the so-called “science” of man-made global warming wasn’t nearly as “settled” as Al Gore claimed; many more of us began to realise that the real danger to our planet had less to do with polar bears on melting ice floes than with all the crazed, expensive government initiatives designed to stop climate changing in the way it has done quite naturally for the past several million years.

And the reason was a news event called Climategate. In bare detail, Climategate sounds quite dull: the leak, on to the internet, of a large number of emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.

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But the contents of those emails were dynamite. What they showed was that the scientists at the very heart of the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) –supposedly the world’s “gold standard” of climate change science – were mired in such incompetence, skulduggery and deceit that you couldn’t trust a word they said.

THE two key figures in the emails were an American professor, Michael Mann and an English one, Phil Jones. Mann was already a legend in his own lunchtime thanks to the Hockey Stick – the scary graph he had invented to show how dramatically global temperatures will supposedly rise as a result of man-made carbon dioxide. Jones was – and still is, unfortunately – head of the CRU, guardian of Britain’s temperature records. These men were among the most important figures in climate science: now their reputation and their predictions of man-made ecodisaster lay in tatters.

Since Climategate, the scientific establishment (helped by three disgraceful official whitewashes) has been busily claiming that the leaked emails are a story of no significance. But even the most cursory examination tells you this is nonsense.

Probably the most infamous email is the one about using “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline”, which essentially means fudging raw data in a most unscientific way to get the “right” result. (Or as you and I would call it: “cheating”.) There are others even more damning.

In one, Jones threatens to breach Freedom of Information laws by illegally deleting important emails; in several others, a cabal of climate science insiders is shown conspiring to prevent issenting scientists airing their views by getting the magazines that publish them shut down. At the very least it invites the question: “If the scientific consensus on global warming is really so rock solid why does so much of it seem to depend on lying, cover-ups, bullying and trickery?” The public, to their credit, have been quick to grasp this fact. Our politicians far less so.

Indeed it’s hard to think of any subject – and that includes immigration and the EU –where the political class has remained quite so out of touch with the popular mood.

In the real Britain you and I inhabit we see our gas and electricity bills rising ever higher because of hidden “renewables” tariffs; we notice that our winters are getting colder; and we see our countryside being blighted by expensive, grotesquely inefficient wind turbines. In Whitehall and Westminster, however, all we see is the messianic fervour of such crazed eco-zealots as Energy Secretary Chris Huhne on their suicidal mission to turn Britain into the “world’s greenest nation”.

And I do mean suicidal. Britain’s national debt is currently around £4.8 trillion (£1 trillion more than the total value of every single home in Britain), our economy is in ruins and we’re told that spending cuts are essential, even to the point of destroying our Armed Forces.

Yet at the same time we have a government committed to an entirely pointless “decarbonisation” programme which will cost the taxpayer £18 billion a year until 2050.

If it weren’t such a tragedy you’d laugh. Under the Climate Change Act 2008 Britain remains the only country legally committed to the kind of CO2 reductions (80 per cent in 40 years) which can only be achieved by bombing our economy back into the Dark Ages.

AND on top of that £18 billion a year, we’re expected to stump up another £100 billion (payable via our utility bills) to cover the costs of the massive windfarm building programme, plus £40 billion to hook the turbines up to the grid; at a time when Spain, Denmark and Germany are ruing the cost of their wind farms and solar generators having found them to be an economic disaster.

What our political class hasn’t yet realised is that Climategate was just the beginning. Each day new evidence emerges of the junk science of the global warming lobby; and with each new opinion poll, public scepticism rises.

One day, hard questions are going to be asked about the taxpayers’ money which has been squandered in the name of combating a non-existent problem. And when that day comes it won’t just be corrupt scientists’ heads that roll but those of naive politicians also.

» How much "Man Made" CO2 Is In The Earth's Atmosphere?
I think ALL of the CO2 in the Earth's Atmosphere is from man.
I'm not sure how much "Man Made" CO2 is in the Earth's Atmosphere.
There is .04% CO2 in the Earth's Atmosphere and of that "Man" has added an extra 4% (1 part in 62,500)